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CALIFORNIA, 



ITS 



CHARACTERISTICS AND PROSPECTS. 



[From the Netv Englander for February, 1858.] 



Z£. 'Pu: fis%. 



CALIFORNIA, 



ITS 



CHARACTERISTICS AND PROSPECTS, 



[From the New Englander for February, 1858.] 



California^ its Cha/ractei'istics and Prospects. [Feb, 



CALIFORNIA, ITS CHARACTERISTICS AND PROSPECTS. 

Whoever wishes, for health's sake or for any other reason, to 
change the sceneries or the objects and associations of his life, 
should set off, not for Europe, but for California. And this 
the more certainly, if he is a loving and sharp observer of 
nature ; for nature meets us here in moods entirely new ; so 
that we have even to make her acquaintance over again ; 
going back, as it were, to be started in a fresh childhood. 
All our common, or previously formed impressions, calcula- 
tions and weather-wisdoms are at fault. We find that we 
really understand nothing and have everything to learn. We 
begin to imagine, for example, that her way is to be thus, or 
thus ; or that her operations are to be solved in this, or that 
manner, but we very soon discover that it will not hold. Our 
guess must be given up and we must try again. A person 
who is at all curious, in the study of natural phenomena, will 
be held in a puzzle thus for whole months, and will nearly com- 
plete the cycle of the year, before he seems to himself to have 
come into any real imderstanding with the new world he is in ; 
just as if he were on a visit to Jupiter and wanted to sail 
round the sun with him, for at least once, and feel out his year, 
before he can be sure that he understands a single day. 

California being to this extent a new world, having its own 
combinations, characters, and colors, it is not to be supposed 
that we can make any reader acquainted with it by words of 
descriptioii. ''TlLe inopt w'e'bsLB Iiiope to accomplish is, that by 
giving some notes on its physical' and social characteristics, we 
may excite a more curious. .au4 possibly a more intelligent 
intej.'(^s.t in C.3lil:0i-nia b'fe, anft itbe certainly great scenes pre- 
paring to be revealed in that far olf, outside, isolated state of 
the Republic. It is not to be supposed that every particular 
representation or suggestion we may offer will be verified by 
the experiments and exact observations of science, or by the 
tests of moral and economical statistics ; we only look on with 



ti-^ 



1858.] Calif or^nia, its Characteristics a/ad Prospects. 3 

our mere eyes, giving our impressions, and venturing wliat 
guesses and possible explications may occur to us. 

The first and most difficult thing to apprehend respecting 
California is the climate, upon which, of course, depend the 
advantages of health and physical development, the growths 
and their conditions and kinds, and the modus operandi^ or 
general cast, of the seasons. But this, again, is scarcely possi- 
ble, without dismissing, first of all, the word climate^ and sub- 
stituting the plural, climates. For it cannot be said of Cali- 
fornia, as of New England, or the Middle States, that it has a 
climate. On the contrary, it has a great multitude, curiously 
pitched together, at short distances, one from another, defying 
too, not seldom, our most accepted notions of the efi'ects of 
latitude and altitude and the defenses of mountain ranges. 
The only way, therefore, is to dismiss generalities, cease to 
look for a climate, and find, if we can, by what process the 
combinations and varieties are made ; for when we get hold of 
the manner and going on of causes, all the varieties are easily 
reducible. 

To make tliis matter intelligible, conceive that middle Cali- 
fornia, the region of which we now speak, lying between the 
head waters of the two great rivers, and about four hundred 
and fifty or five hundred miles long from north to south, is 
divided lengthwise, parallel to the coast, into three strips, or 
ribands of about equal width. First, the coast-wise region, 
comprising two, three, and sometimes four parallel tiers of 
mountains from five hundred to four thousand, five thousand, 
or even ten thousand feet high. Next, advancing inward, we 
have a middle strip, from fifty to seventy miles wide, of almost 
dead plain, which is called the great valley ; down the 
scarcely perceptible slopes of which, from north to south, and 
south to north, run the two great rivers, the Sacramento and 
the San Joaquim, to join their waters at the middle of the 
basin and pass oif to the sea. The third long strip, or riband, 
is the slope of the Sierra Nevada chain, which bounds the 
great valley on the east, and contains in its foot-hills, or rather 
in its lower half, all the gold mines. The upper half is, to a 



4 California^ its Characteristics and Prospects. [Feb. 

great extent, bare granite rock, and is crowned, at the summit, 
with snow, about eight months of the year. 

ISTow the climate of these parallel strips will be diflferent 
almost of course, and subordinate, local differences, quite as 
remarkable, will result from subordinate features in the local 
configurations, particularly of the seaward strip or portion. 
For all the varieties of climate, distinct as they become, are 
made by variations wrought in the rates of motion, the 
courses, the temperature, and the dryness of a single wind ; 
viz, the trade wind of the summer months, which blows 
directly inward all the time, only with much greater power 
during that part of the day when the rarefaction of the great 
central valley comes to its aid ; that is from about ten o'clock 
in the morning, to the setting of the sun. Conceive such a 
wind, chilled by the cold waters that have come down from 
the ITorthern Pacific, perhaps from Behring Straits, combing 
the tops and wheeling round through the vallej'S of the coast- 
wise mountains, crossing the great valley at a much retarded 
rate, and growing hot and diy, fanning gently the foot-hills 
and sides of the Sierra, still more retarded by the piling neces- 
sary to break over into Utah, and the conditions of the Califor- 
nia climate, or climates, will be understood with general 
accuracy. Greater simplicity in the matter of climate is im- 
possible, and greater variety is hardly to be imagined. 

For the whole dry season, viz, from May to November, this 
wind is in regular blast, day by day, only sometimes approach- 
ing a little more nearly to a tempest than at others. It 
never brings a drop of rain, however thick and rain-like the 
clouds it sometimes drives before it. Tlie cloud element, 
indeed, is always in it. Sometimes it is floated above, in the 
manner commonly designated by the term cloud. Sometimes, 
as in the early morning, when the wind is most quiet, it may 
be seen as a kind of fog bank resting on the sea-wall moun- 
tains, or rolling down landward through the insterstices of 
their summits. "When the wind begins to hurry and take on 
less composedly, the fog becomes blown fog, a kind of lead 
dust driven through the air, reducing it from a transparent to 
a semi-transparent or merely translucent state, so that if any 



185S.] Calif ornia^ its Characteristics and Prospects. 5 

one looks up the bay, from a point twenty or thirty miles 
south of San Francisco, in the afternoon, he will commonly see, 
directly abreast of the Golden Gate where this wind drives in 
with its greatest power, a pencil of the lead dust shooting up- 
wards at an angle of thirty or forty degrees, (which is the aim 
of the wind prej^aring to leap the second chain of mountains, 
the other side of the bay,) and finally tapering off and vanish- 
ing, at a mid-air point eight or ten miles inland, where the in- 
creased heat of the atmosphere has taken up the moisture, and 
restored its complete transparency. This wind is so cold, that 
one who will sit upon the deck of the afternoon steamer pass- 
ing up the Bay, will even require his heaviest winter clothing. 
And so rough are the waters of the Bay, land-locked and nar- 
row as it is, that sea-sickness is a kind of regular experience, 
with such as are candidates for that kind of felicity. 

We return now to the middle strip of the great valley Avhere 
the engine, or rather boiler power, that operates the coast 
wind in a great part of its velocity, is located. Here the heat, 
reverberated as in a forge, or oven (whence Cali—fornia) 
becomes, even in the early spring, so much raised that the 
ground is no longer able, by any remaining cold tliere is in it, 
to condense the clouds, and rain ceases. A little further on 
in the season, there is not cooling influence enongb left to al- 
low even the phenomena of cloud, and for weeks together, 
not a cloud will be seen, unless, by chance, the skirt of one 
may just aj)pear now and then, hanging over the summit of 
the western mountains. The sun rises, fixing his hot stare on 
the world, and stares through the day. Then he returns as in 
an orrery, and stares through another, in exactly the same way. 
The thermometer will go up, not seldom, to 100° or even 110°, 
and judging by what we know of effects here in I^ew Eng- 
land, we should suppose that life would scarcely be support- 
able. And yet there is much less suffering from heat in this 
valley than with us, for the reason probably that the nights 
are uniformly cool. The thermometer goes down regularly 
with the sun, and one or tw^o blankets are wanted for the com- 
fort of the night. This cooling of the night is probably deter- 
mined by the fact that the cool sea wind, sweeping through the 



6 California^ its Cliaracterist'iGS and Prosj)ects. [Feb. 

upper air of tlie valley, from the coast mountains on one side, 
over tlie mountains and mountain passes of tlie Sierra on the 
other, is not able to get down to the ground of the valley during 
the day, because of the powerfully steaming column of heat 
that rises from it ; but as soon as the sun goes down, it drops 
immediately to the level of the plain, bathing it for the night 
with a kind of perpendicular sea breeze, that has lost for the 
time a great part of its lateral motion. The consequence is 
that no one is greatly debilitated by the heat. On the contrary, 
it is the general testimony, that a man can do as much of men- 
tal or bodily labor in this climate, as in any other. And it is 
a good confirmation of this opinion, that horses will here main- 
tain a wonderful energy, traveling greater distances, com- 
plaining far less of heat, and sustaining their spirit a great 
deal better than with us. It is also to be noted that there is 
no special tendency to fevers in this hot region, except in 
what is called the tule bottom, a kind of giant bulrush region, 
along the most depressed and marshiest portions of the rivers. 
Passing now to the eastern strip or portion, the slope of the 
Nevada, the heat, except in those deep canons where the re- 
verberation makes it sometimes even insupportable, is quali- 
fied in degree, according to the altitude. A gentle west wind, 
heated in the lower parts or foothills by the heat of the valley, 
fans it all day. At points which are higher the wind is cooler. 
Here also, on the slope of the Nevada, the nights are always 
cool in summer, so cool that the late and early frosts leave too 
short a space for the ordinary summer crop to mature, even 
where the altitude is not more than 3,000 or 4,000 feet. 
Meantime, at the top of the Sierra, where the west wind, piling 
up from below, breaks over into Utah, travelers undertake to 
say that, in some of the passes it blows with such stress as 
even to polish the rocks, by the gravel and sand which it 
drives before it. The day is cloudless on the slope of the 
Sierra, as in the valley, but on the top there is now and then, 
or once in a year or two, a moderate thunder shower. With 
this exception, as referring to a part uninhabitable, thunder 
is scarcely ever heard in California. The principal thunders of 
California are underground. 



1858.] California, its Cliaracteristics and Prospects. 1 

We return now to the coast-wise mountain region, where tlie 
multiplicity and confusion of climates is most remarkable. 
Their variety we shall find depends on the courses of the wind 
currents, turned hither and thither by the mountains ; partly 
also on the side any given place occupies of its valley or 
mountain; and partly on the proximity of the sea. Sprinkled 
in among these mountains, and more or less inclosed by them, are 
valleys, large and small, of the highest beauty. But a valley 
in California means something more than a scoop, or depres- 
sion. It means a rich land-lake, leveled between the moun- 
tains, with a sharply defined, picturesque shore, where it meets 
the sides and runs into the indentations of the mountains. 
"What is called the Bay of San Francisco, is a large salt water 
lake in the middle of a much larger land-lake, sometimes 
called the San Jose valley. It extends south of the city forty 
miles, and northward among islands and mountains, about twen- 
ty-five more, if we include what is called the San Pablo Bay, 
Three beautiful valleys of agricultural country, the Petaluma, 
Sonoma, and Napa valleys, open into this larger valley of the 
Bay on the north end of it, between four mountain barriers, 
having each a short navigable creek or inlet. Still farther 
north is the Russian Biver valley, opening towards the sea, and 
the Clear Lake valley and region, which is the Switzerland of 
California. East of the San Jose valley, too, at the foot of Dia- 
bolo, and up among the mountains, are the large Amador and 
San Baraon valleys, also the little gem of the Sunole. Now these 
valleys, which if we except the great valley of the two rivers, 
comprise the plow-land of middle California, have each a cli- 
mate of its own, and productions that corresjjond. We 
have only to observe further, that the east side of any 
valley will commonly be much warmer than the w^est ; for 
the very paradoxical reason that the cold coast-wind always 
blows much harder on the side or steep slope even, of a moun- 
tain, opposite or away from the wind, than it does on the 
side towards it, reversing all our notions of the sheltering ef- 
fects of mountain ridges. 

Nothing will so fatally puzzle a stranger as the observing of 
this fact ; for he will doubt a long time, first, whether it be a 



8 California^ its Characteristics and Prcspects. [Feb. 

fact, and then, what possible account to make of it. Crossing 
the Golden Gate in a small steamer, for example, to Sau- 
celito, whence the water is brought for the city, he will 
look for a quiet shelter to the little craft, apparently in danger 
of foundering, when it comes under the lee of that grand 
mountain wall that almost overhangs the water on the west. 
But he is surprised, when he arrives, to find the wind blowing 
straight down the face of it, harder even than elsewhere, goug- 
ing into the water by a visible depression, and actually raising 
caps of white within a single rod of the shore. In San Fran- 
cisco itself, he will find the cold coast-wind pouring down over 
the western barrier with uncomfortable rawness, when return- 
ing from a ride at Point Lobos, on the very beach of the sea, 
where the air was comparatively soft and quiet. So, crossing 
the Sonoma valley, he will come out into it from the west, 
through a cold, windy gorge, to find orange trees growing in 
Gen. Vallejo's garden, close under the eastern valley wall, as 
finely as in Cuba. In multitudes of places too on the east- 
ward slopes of the mountains, he will notice that the trees, 
which have, all, their growth in the coast-wind season, have 
their tops thrown over, like cock's tails turned away from the 
wind. After he has been sufiiciently perplexed, and stumbled 
by these facts, he will finally strike upon the reason, viz, that 
this cold, trade wind, being once lifted or driven over the sea- 
wall mountains, and being specifically heavier than the atmos- 
phere into which it is going, no sooner passes the summit than 
it pitches down as a cold cataract, with the uniformly accel- 
erated motion of falling bodies. Then, as a confirmation, it 
will occur to him perhaps, that he has been seeing it demon- 
strated all summer long, from his residence on the opposite, or 
eastern side of the Bay ; where, during all the fore part of the 
day, and sometimes for the whole afternoon, he has noticed a 
fog cap, or cloud rolling over the distant top of the western 
mountain, and driving more than half-way down the hither 
side of it, before it has caught sun enough or heat enough to 
become transparent. 

Having gotten the understanding of this fact, many things 
are made plain. For example, in traveling down the western 



1858.] California^ its Characteristics and Prospects. 9 

side of tlic Bay from San Francisco to San Jose, and passing 
directly nnder tlie mountain range just referred to, he has 
found himself passing through as many as four or five distinct 
climates; for, when abreast of some gap or de})ression in the 
western wall, the heavy wind lias poured down with a chill- 
ing coldness, making even an overcoat desirable, though 
it be a clear, summer day ; and then, when he is abreast 
of some high summit, which the fog-wind sweeps by, and 
therefore need not pass over, a sweltering and burning heat is 
felt, in which the lightest summer clothing is more than 
enough. lie has also observed that directly o})posite the 
Golden Gate, at Oakland, and the Alameda point, where the 
central column of this wind miglit be supposed to press most 
uncomfortably, the land is covered with growths of evergreen 
oak, standing fresh and erect, wliile north and south, on either 
side, scarcely a tree is to be seen for many miles ; a mystery that 
is now explained by the fact that the wind, driving here square 
against the Contra Costa or second range, is piled and gets no 
current, till it slides oif north and south from the point of 
quiet here made; which also is confirmed by the fact, that, in 
riding down from San Pablo on the north, he has the wind in 
his face, finds it slacken as he approaches Oakland, and pass- 
ing on still southward to San Leandro, has it blowing at his 
back. 

The varieties, and even what appeared to be the incredible 
anomalies of the California climates, begin at last to be more 
intelligible. The remarkable contrast, for example, between 
the climates of Benicia and Martinez is clearly accounted for. 
These two places, only a mile and a half apart, on opposite 
sides of the straits of Carquinez, and connected by a ferry, 
like two points on a river, are yet more strikingly contrasted, 
in their summer climates, than Charleston and Quebec. Thus 
the Golden Gate column, wheeling upon Oakland, as just 
now described, sweeps along the face of the Contra Costa 
chain in its northward course, setting the few tree tops of San 
Pablo aslant, as weather vanes stuck fast by rust, and drives 
its cold sea-diist full in the face of Benicia. Meantime, at 
Martinez, close under the end of the mountain which has 



10 California^ its Characteristics and Prospects. [Feb. 

turned the M'iiid directly by, and is itself cloven down here to 
let the straits of Carquinez pass through, the sun shines hot 
and with an almost dazzling clearness, and all the characters 
of the climate belong rather to the great valley caldron, whose 
rim it may be said is here. 

Equally plain now is the solution of those apparent inver- 
sions of latitude which, at first, perplex the stranger. In the 
region about Marysville, for example, he is overtaken by a 
fierce sweltering heat in April, and scarcely hears, perhaj^s, in 
the travel of a day, a single bird sing, as if meaning it for a 
song. He descends by steamer to San Francisco, and thence 
to San Jose, making a distance in all of more than two hun- 
dred miles, where he finds a cool, spring-like freshness in the 
air, and hears the birds screaming with song even more vehe- 
mently than in New England. It is as if he had passed out 
of a tropical into a temperate climate; wdien, in fact, he is 
due south of Marysville by the whole distance passed over. 
But the mystery is all removed by the discovery, that instead 
of keeping in the great valley, he broke out of it through 
the straits of Carquinez into the Bay valley, and the cold bath 
atmosphere of the coast-wise mountains ; that now he is in fact 
within twenty miles of the sea, separated from it only by a 
single wall, while at Marysville, he was more than a hundred 
miles from the sea, with four or five high mountain tiers be- 
tween. 

Thus much for the summer climate of California. The win- 
ter climate is the trade wund reversed. The Sierra is covered 
now with snows of incredible depth at the top, and they ex- 
tend even dow^n to its foot, wliitening also not seldom, the 
great valley, which is much colder, at this season, than the 
coast-mountain region. Temperature, in short, is inverted, 
just as the winds are. The temperature in San Francisco, for 
example ranges generally between 60° and Y0°, as in the sum- 
mer between 65° and 80° ; though the cold of experience will 
be scarcely greater in the winter than in the summer, because, 
in winter, the air is comparatively still, aud in summer adds a 
cooling effect by its motion. Probably there is not a more 
even climate in the world. Now and then the thermometer 



1858.] Cal'ifornia^ its Characteristics and Prospects. 11 

will sink low eiiougli, at iiiglit, to produce a thin scale of ice, 
but geraniums will be seen in full blossom, on the terraces of 
the gardens, throughout the winter. 

It is hardly necessary to say that this westward return of 
the trade winds brings the rainy season. All the rain of the 
year is from it. It sometimes blows too with terriiic violence 
and pours even cascades of rain for whole days together, pro- 
ducing immense floods ; though generally the whole amount 
of rain which it brings is much too small, for the supply of the 
springs and the due moistening of the soil for the year. It is 
not to be understood that what is called the rainy season is a 
season of continual rain. It is scarcely more rainy, if at all, 
than our three autumnal months. And at about the mid-point 
of the season, or in the month of February, there is commonly a 
suspension, which separates what may be called the early from 
the latter rain, as in Palestine. This month of February is, in 
fact, the most lovely and, in many respects, the most beautiful 
month of the year. The green of the landscape is then fresh- 
est, the air is soft, the sky clear, the roads neither wet nor 
dusty — all the conditions of comfort and beauty meet, to crown 
it as the June of the Pacific. 

If now it should appear that we have spent too much time 
on the winds and meteorologic phenomena of California, it is 
sufiicient to answer, that while such an impression would be 
right if New England were the subject, it is not riglit when 
the subject is California. The winds of our Eastern shore are 
a confused mixture, of Avhich nothing can be predicated with 
certainty, except the uncertainty of the weather. The Pacific 
winds, on the other hand, are very nearly calculable quanti- 
ties ; and by them are determined, to a great degree, the tem- 
perature of places, the rains, the seasons, the almost uniform 
salubrity of the countrj^, (for with all its varieties there is prob- 
ably no healthier region on the globe,) the growths also, as re- 
spects both their rates and kinds, and further still, the immense 
commercial advantages ; for California, as we shall by and 
by see, is elected for the great metropolitan centre of the 
commerce of the Pacific, quite as much by its winds, as by the 
magnificent harbor, whose Gate is here set open, to let the ships 



12 California^ its Characteristics and Prospects. [Feb. 

fly in, as doves to their windows, from all the seas of the 
world. The gold of California, taken as a determining cause 
and physical endowment of its future, is not once to be com- 
pared with its winds. They are more necessary, by a thousand 
times, to the greatness of California than the mines. If any 
one judges, from our description, that they are too cold, or too 
strong, or too much laden with moisture, he will greatly mis- 
take. If they were warmer, softer and more dry on the coast, 
even by a few degrees, it would greatly injure the country and 
might even be a fatal blight on its prospects. Indeed, if Cali- 
fornia has any prospects, it is just because the light baffling 
winds, or rather no winds of the coast below, are here dis- 
placed by such blasts as have power to drive across its whole 
width and fan it with their cooling breath. Otherwise its rich 
valleys and lowlands would be arid deserts, its shores and riv- 
ers reeking places of disease, and even its mining region too 
hot to be worked or even inhabited, in the summer months. 

Having gotten our advantage therefore, in a due understand- 
ing of the winds and the climate of California, our description 
may now proceed more rapidly. The scenery of California 
depends partly on the surfaces and partly on the seasons. It 
differs from our Eastern shore, in the fact that it is made up of 
concave or scooped surfaces, flowing into convex summits or 
rounded surfaces, only to a very limited extent ; all the valleys 
being plains, or land-lakes, with definite indented shores, like 
shores of water. It difiers also from the western prairies and 
the plains of the south, where the horizon is sunk and the sky 
becomes a small inverted bowl, in the fact that every spot, even 
in the widest of the valleys, has a mountain wall and horizon 
visible in the distance, which props the sky and lifts the vault 
of it, giving a look of airiness and expansion, and connect- 
ing impressions even of grandeur and beauty. Mountain and 
plain, plain and mountain, stretching generally coastwise in 
their figure, make up the rough calico of the surface. Some- 
times the mountains are bare, or nearly so, showing a mottled 
look in the distance, where the sun, glancing down their sides, 
burnishes the points and casts a shade on the hollows. Here 



1858.J California^ its Characteristics and Prospects. 13 

the cattle on a tlionsand hills are no figure ; for the hills are 
pastures, covered many of them with a rich growth of grass 
and wild oats even to the top, and the cattle paths, beaten like 
shelve rows into their steep sides, just save them apparently 
from sliding off" into the abysses, making every rod of pasture 
accessible and permitting them finally to emerge, as the tri- 
umph of their engineering instinct, on summits 2,000, or even 
3,000 feet high, where they are seen from below, in clean relief 
on the sky. Sometimes again the mountain sides are covered 
with a dense chapparal, appearing in the distance just as they 
would if darkened by a forest ; save that, now and then, the 
chapparal is of a most intense, transparently green color, show- 
ing a summit that emerges into the sun, when surrounded by 
the driving clouds below, like a huge pile of emerald. Some- 
times the distant summits are seen to be covered with a growth 
of redwoods, that stand posted there as giant sentinels, every 
trunk distinctly visible, and all together, 200 or 300 feet high, 
combing the sky in dark relief upon it, giving to the horizon 
thus a most peculiar look of spirit and majesty. The lower half of 
the Sierra Nevada, comprising the foothills and the whole mining 
region, is covered extensively with a timber growth of pines, 
cedars and other evergreens. The upper half is bald, ragged 
granite, the highest peaks of which are covered a great part 
of the year with snow. All the mountains dilfer from those 
of the east, in the fact that they are seamed or furrowed from 
the tops downward, every few rods, by a ravine or water course. 
These ravines are many of them dry in the summer, though 
generally, or at least frequently, displaying a green line of 
shrubbery and trees in their coui'se, which makes them very 
conspicuous from a distance ; especially when the mountains 
are bare on their general surface. These ravines, too, are 
often cut miles deep into the hills, becoming immense chasms, 
canons or gorges, out of which all the earth has been swept, 
to fill the rich valley bottom and make up the land-lake 
deposit of the plain. All the mountains accordingly are 
flanked by spurs with intervening gorges, and these again by 
spurs, and these again by the same ; so that, standing on the 
side of some grand amphitheatre, the spectator may some- 



14 California^ its Characteristics and Prospects. [Feb. 

times see that lie is on tlie spur of a spur, even in the fifth 
degree ; all of which spurs are run together, like pig iron 
castings in a furnace, only with a more disorderly complica- 
tion. Hence, too, the impossibility in California, as we may 
here remark in passing, that any railroad should ever get 
over a mountain, as with us, by skirting along its sides till it 
has made the ascent ; for such a line would be cut by the 
side canons, or gorges, from a hundred to a thousand or even 
two thousand feet deep, every half mile. There is no way but 
to follow up the bottom of some great canon, or river gorge, till 
it becomes too steep, and escape by a tunnel ; or else to find 
some spur whose back can be ascended, and keep it to the top. 

From these general descriptions of the surface it will be natu- 
rally inferred that there is a great deal, both of beautiful and of 
grand scenery, in California. Few countries are richer in 
their varieties, and none more peculiar in all. Here sleeps 
in quiet, earthly beauty the rich vale of Sonoma, backed in 
rough grandeur by the towering Diabolo, a picture in a 
frame. Here in the deep chasm or angle that foots the Yo 
Hamite Falls, a river is beheld pitching off a summit 2,400 
feet high, and by two leaps reaching the bottom ; type, as it 
were, of heaven's mercy pouring from the sky. Here on the 
other hand, at the Geysers, in the cracking, cannonading, 
wdiistling and roaring of steam, and the sj)outing of hot mud, 
and the brimstone fumes of the place, we look on a field, 
under which we may w^ell enough imagine the infernals, swel- 
tering and tearing, as it w-ere, diabolically, to break loose. 
At the Big Trees, we enter a dell, quietly lapped in the 
mountains, where the majestic vegetable minarets are 
crowded, as in some city of pilgi'image ; there to look up, 
for the first time, in silent awe of the mere life principle. 

The scene of the city and bay, from the high background of 
the city, is one that any lover of nature might travel far to 
see. The same reversed, from the east side of the bay, at 
Clinton^ is more remarkable. In tlie unalterable green fore- 
ground, are the oaks of Oakland and the Alameda ; here and 
there flows in a strip or armlet of water ; next comes the Bay, 
in the middle, with its picturesque islands ; beyond are the 



1858.] California, its Characteristics and Prosjpects. 15 

cit}^, and the open Gate showing the Farralonc Islands far off 
at sea ; right and left, each side of the Gate, the grand sea-wall 
of mountains stretches north and south, for a background, at 
least fifty miles — it is not the bay of Naples, the dreamy soft- 
ness and quiet luxury are not here, but with more severity, 
the scene unites a higher spirit and a beauty as much more 
impressive and brilliant. The Gate itself, cleaving down the 
mountains, to let the commerce of the Great Ocean of the 
w^orld pass in, has a look of destiny in it strong enough to be 
sublime. 

There is a little valley owned by a wealthy and respect- 
able Spanish Californian, Mr. Sunole, which is commonly 
called by his name, and is occupied as a pasture ground or ranch 
for his herds. It lies over among the Contra Costa, or second 
range of mountains east of Mission San Jose, and is entered by 
a pass some four hundred feet above the valley bottom, which 
comprises about a thousand acres. Through this valley 
bottom runs a clear, rapid stream, which, in the spring, 
would be called a river, and which, wheeling round to the 
northwest, cuts the mountain to its base, dashing through one 
of the wildest gorges that can be conceived, 1,500 feet deep, 
and hurrying off into the Bay. On the north rises a huge 
bare summit 2,000 feet high. On the southwest the Mission 
Peak, 2,500 feet high. On the southeast, across the narrow 
wooded-gorge, through which the river breaks into the valley, 
other fantastic peaks 3,000 feet high. On the east, the enclo- 
sure is made by a low, steep range of naked hills showing 
others, higher and still higher, behind them. A stranger, fresh 
arrived in May, at the Mission, takes his horse, for example, 
the next morning, and finding a road that turns into the 
narrow gorge, or opening of the hills near by, goes in to ex- 
plore a little and find whither it leads. The steep, smooth- 
faced hills, or rather mountains, pile in with rounding 
fronts on either side, just leaving a jDassage between, and 
they are so lighted up by the sun brushing down their trans- 
lucent surfaces of green, and tuned to such wild harmony 
by their many-colored flowers, that sight overflows, and he 
begins unwittinglj^ to listen ; as if there must be something 



16 California., its Characteristics and, Prosjpects. [Feb. 

audible, some hymn or note of Memnon in the scene. Pass- 
ing a low summit, tlie beautiful valley opens to view, and 
such a combination of colors no eastern man or European 
has ever seen or conceived. The green is not what we call 
a grass green. Neither is it the pale bluish green of England, 
but a soft yellow green, covering the whole landscape, the 
steeps even to their summits, all the roundings and hollows, 
as well as the rich floor of the valley bottom, like an im- 
mense carpet of plush spread over the scene ; which carpet 
is so matted with flowers in all the highest colors, sprinkled 
sometimes in groups, that we call it b}^ this name without 
any efibrt of fancy — we can think of nothing else. No 
painter, practiced in our com:r;on styles of scenery, could 
manage at all such a picture, without much study, assisted 
probably by many failures. 

Descending next into the valley, he finishes out the 
picturesque of the morning, in looking on a scene quite 
as new and peculiar as the scenery. In the extreme south- 
ern angle of the plain, just where the river issues from 
the gorge of the mountains, he observes a cloud of dust 
rising, and horsemen rushing wildly through it in all di- 
rections. Something brisk is evidently going on here, and 
he must needs find what it is. Approaching the spot he 
discovers an immense herd of cattle brought together from 
the hills, which the owners and their herdsmen are either 
sorting by their marks, or which else they are sorting out, in 
sale of a part, for tlie market — they are Spanish, native Cali- 
fornians all, and do not answer English questions. This at 
least is plain, that they are gathering out of the great herd of 
a thousand or more, to make up another and se2:)arate herd 
a short distance off, and the lasso practice is the power. 
Riding into the herd and througli it, they chase out one, 
turning him towards the new herd. But he runs by, and 
back into the herd, or he strikes out into the plain, in some 
other direction. But the pursuer is after him. Hound and 
round swings the fatal loop or noose above his head as he 
goes, till he gets within reach, at three or four rods distance, 
when he lets it fly, and it drops with a kind of astronomic 



1858.] CaUforma^ its Characteristics and Prospects. IT 

certainty round the poor animal's horns. FceUng it fast 
upon hiin, the animal now turns upon his persecutor, and it is 
convenient for him also to fly in his turn — only kcepiiii^ the 
cord still fast to the horn of his saddle. Another horseman 
follows immediately, and anotlier lasso drops and is drawn 
fast. Now the animal, in a line between the two pur- 
suers, strikes off, throwing his whole momentum, if he can, 
upon the straight line, at right angles to it, which gives 
him advantage enough to unhorse both of them, if they let 
him come to the blow. All three, therefore, now are in a 
race together, and as soon as this is seen, a third horseman is 
in pursuit, and throwing his lasso, he picks up a hind leg of 
the ox as he runs, doing it as easily as a knitter might 
take up a fallen stitch. This done, while the two others 
are spreading right and left, he darts off sideways in a prick 
of the spur, and jerks the refractory beast flat upon the 
ground ; where he lies bellowing in fright and despair, held 
fast by three cords, at three angles, as little able to escape as a 
fly in a spider's web. Next a huge, fiery bull is seen rushing 
out of the herd, pursued by a small, sharp looking herdsman, 
who says, by a certain look of his eye, that he will show the 
green stranger a trick. Bolting into the plain, the mettle- 
some, tall animal, leads oft' in a race which puts the horse 
to his best speed. But as the pursuer comes up with him, he 
seizes the tail of the renegade, streaming level behind him, 
winds it by a quick turn round the horn of his saddle, and 
darting off suddenly by a spring, as if it were done by some 
concussion of gunpowder, he jerks the bull flat down and rolls 
him clean over! Whereupon there is a shout from all — but the 
bull ; who gets up, as it were, in an eftort of self-recollection, 
and walks ofi" meekly where they show him the way. 

We only add, as regards the scenery in California, that ev- 
erything is here inverted which we commonly assume in re- 
spect to the effects of culture. Culture improves nothing. 
California was finished as a w^orld of beauty, before civilization 
appeared. The magnificent valleys opened wide and clean. 
The scattered oaks stood in majesty, here and there, and took 
aw^ay the nakedness. Civilization comes, cuts down the oaks 
for firewood, fences off the plains into squares, covers them 



18 California^ its Chai'aoteristics and Prospects. [Feb. 

with grain or stubble, scatters wild mustard over them, it may 
be, and converts them into a weedy looking desolation. The 
only attractive looking surface ever to be seen in California, is 
the native original surface ; for there is never to be a lawn, or 
a neat grassy slope, as with us, because there is no proper turf. 
Shrubbery itself can never be made ornamental in California, 
except where there is irrigation to maintain it. "Where there 
is irrigation, a garden or house lot may be covered in with 
trees and set oiF with liowers, so as to be really fresh in beauty 
at all times, but this is not the kind of beauty that makes a 
landscape. In the mining country, the natural beauty of the 
scenery is defaced by another process. Here a thin but stately 
growth of evergreens is sprinkled over the generally graceful 
slopes and roundings of the hills, and a pure crystal stream 
leaps along down the trough of the hills, over cliffs of rock and 
pebbly beds. But the miner comes. Finding gold that will 
" P'^y " ii^ the soil, he rents a head of water from the Ditch 
Company, whose ditch, bringing on the water from some level 
far up in the Sierra, flows it along from hill top down to hill 
top, and across from one hill to another, leaping hollows and 
ravines on wooden tressle work, sometimes even two hundred 
feet high, till it reaches a point abreast of his placer, and di- 
rectlv above it. Brino'ino' it down the hill in an immense cot- 
ton hose, with a nozzle pipe like that of a fire engine, he 
plays it into the side of the hill, with a pressure of perhaps 
one hundred and fifty feet fall ; tears down the hill, acre by 
acre, and floats it off, rollino- the loose stones with it down his 
wooden trunk or sluice, in which the gold is arrested, and so 
continues, till he has carried off a large section of the hill side, 
even a hundred feet deep. His neighbors are doing the same 
thing right and left. Pits also are sunk downward, and tun- 
nels bored in level into the sides of the hills, and the earth 
from so many burrows, is piled at their mouths. The 
trees are cut down for timber and fire wood. The stream of 
the valley runs thick with creamy richness, and the cliffs and 
j)ebbly beds are covered fifty feet deep with stones and mud- 
washings. The result is a most horrid desolation, of which 
every line of the natural beauty is gone forever. If some 



185S.] California., its Characteristics and Prospects. 19 

camp of demons had been pitclied here for a year, tearing the 
earth by their fury, and converting it to the model of their 
own bad tliought, they could luirdly make it h:»ok worse. The 
wdiole mining region is filially to become a desolation in just 
this manner. There is no possibility of a process more delicate 
for extracting the gold. Indeed there seems to be a kind of 
prior necessity, which nature n^ust needs recognize, that gold 
and desolation go together, "What we see then, at the mines, 
only represents too faithfully what holds good historically in 
the moral desolations of plunder, fraud, and avarice, instigated 
by this treasure of the mountains. The only part of Califor- 
nia, in short, that wall not be damaged in its scenery by the 
arrival of culture, is the broken country of the coast region, 
or the region of natural pasturage ; except that possibly the 
Artesian wells may be carried so far as to irrigate a considera- 
ble part of the valley surfaces. Thus, while there is almost no 
stream running through a valley bottom in the summer, be- 
cause every issue from the mountains sinks immediately into 
the gravel beds of the plains, and runs under, it may turn out 
generally, in the narrow valleys, as in that of San Jose, that 
Artesian wells, sunk two hundred or three hundred feet, will 
bring it up, spouting into liberty on the surface. Two or three 
of the w^ells in this town throw a column nine inches in diam- 
eter, ten or fifteen feet high, discharging water enough to turn 
a mill and of course to irrigate a large surface. 

It will doubtless occur to many, that the dry season of the 
year, which is the summer, must be a season of utter desola- 
tion as regards the scenery. What can be more desolate than 
a universal dry death ? And if the water-runs, or ravines are 
green, if the chapparal on some of the mountains, and occa- 
sionally trees in the plains, that have the faculty to bore deep 
for their water, show a semblance of life, if the gardens which 
are irrigated show a patch of luxuriancy here and there, like 
an oasis in the yellow desert, what after all is the landscape 
but a desert? Suppose then it were to be covered with snows 
two or three feet deep, and every solitary thing stripped of its 
green, would the scenery be less desolate? But this is our 
winter. The wintry, or suspension time of California is in the 



20 California^ its Characteristics and Prospects. [Feb. 

summer, and the winter months of the almanac are dressed 
in the richest, freshest green. And yet the Californians all 
speak of beautiful scenery in the summer, and any one who 
has been there a few months begins to sympathize with them. 
Trees and chapparal are stronger marks on the landscape than 
with us, green spots, such as watered fields and gardens, 
have a fascinating freshness. And even the dry surfaces, in 
certain lights, make a picture, by aid of the shadows on the 
hollow sui-faces, and the occasional green of trees and chap- 
paral and gardens, that is really beautiful. The little valley 
jnst described, for example, puts off its green and takes on a 
dress of drab, velvety and soft in the glancing strokes of the 
liglit, and becomes for all the world a neat Quaker bonnet; 
only that the deep blue green of the gorges, and the lively 
green ribands that dangle down the water courses are a little 
too dressy and fantastic, and suggest a case of sumptuary dis- 
cipline. The most that can be said of this Pacific hybernation 
time is, that while our winter is absolute, unconquerable deso- 
lation, the Californian can go into his garden, turn on the 
water, make an outdoor green-house of it, filled with all 
richest fruits and singing birds, and there wait patiently till 
the months of green return. 

The growths of California are as peculiar and various as their 
climate. To make this subject intelligible, let it be understood 
that where there is no irrigation, natural or artificial, nothing 
grows perennially in California, except trees that have a tap 
root, and shrubs and grasses that have some peculiar kind of 
root that enables them to get sufficient moisture, where only a 
little is given. There is a coarse, perennial grass, for example, 
that is found, when dug, to grow out of perpendicular rootlets 
eight or ten inches long, which themselves grow out of large 
horizontal roots, that serve as water cisterns or sponges for the 
uses overhead. None of the common upland, or hay grasses, 
live through the summer, and therefore none make what can 
be called a turf. The grasses of every season are started in 
November, from the ripe seeds dropped into the chinks of the 
ground, in the dry season previous. It results accordingly, 



1858,] California, Us Char'aderi sties and Profipects. 21 

that no crop can be raised in California, wliicli does not ripen 
before the dry season commences, or by about the first of 
June. Tlie only exceptions possible to this are made by irri- 
gation, either where water is artificially supplied, or where, 
as will sometimes be the case, there is a supply from stores, or 
filterings underneath. It is only under these conditions tluit a 
crop of Indian corn, or potatoes, can be raised. Though an 
early crop of potatoes, ripening in June or in July, can be 
raised anywhere ; and where the ground is sufliciently moist- 
ened from below, two crops a year are frequently grown upon 
the same soiL Potatoes of the late crop are grown too in 
some places near the coast, where they get moisture enough 
from the atmosphere and the fog, to answer their purpose. A 
sunnner garden will commonly make but a poor figure, unless 
it is recruited by supplies of water not contained in the 
natural soil of the place. The dry season is, in fact, the 
wintering season of vegetation, though it is the summer. 
"Whatever lives, hybernates, rests. The strawberry, for exam- 
ple, ripens its fruit in April, has its growth, ceases, begins to 
look rusty, and passes into the state of suspension, finally to 
die. Let on now a flow of water, and it wakes, blossoms 
again, bears another crop, and passes into a second suspension, 
and then is ready to be wakened and bear a third crop. And 
so by alternating in times with difierent beds, a succession is 
kept up, and a bountiful supply is obtained from April to No- 
vember. 

The principal growths, or products of California, are accord- 
ingly the fruits and the cereals. Most of the fruits really 
want irrigation, though there are many tracts of soil in Mhich 
they will flourish w^ithout, and will not ripen prematurely. 
The fruits are grapes, figs, olives, pomegranates, almonds, 
plums, apricots, pears, peaches and apples. Finer grapes are 
grown nowhere in the world. The apples are large and fair, 
and wonderfully precocious in bearing, but there is reason to 
suspect, from experiments made in the old mission gardens, 
that they may be short lived. Peaches, plums, and pears bear 
only too profusely. Indeed, there is a wondrous tendency to 
fructification in every kind of growth, animal and vegetable. 



22 California^ its Characteristics and Prospects. [Feb. 

As jet, tlie fruits sell at enormous prices, because of the short- 
ness of supply. In a very few years they will be plenty and 
cheap. And even now there is no city on the earth, where the 
fruit shops make as fine a show as in San Francisco. Consid- 
ering the size, the fairness, the varieties, and all that goes to 
make a show of richness and profusion, there is pro1)ably 
nothing in the world, to match the displays of fruit in this new 
city of the Pacific. 

But the great agricultural crops of California are the cereals, 
wheat, and barley, and oats. These are sown at any time, 
when it is both wet enough and dry enough to plow, between 
November and Marcli ; harvested any time between the rip- 
ening of June and the rain-falls of November; for they will 
stand uninjured, or lie, as left by the reaper, uninjured and 
without shelling, all that time; so that a small force sufiices 
l)oth to raise and to harvest a large crop. And the yield is from 
twenty to sixty bushels of wheat to the acre, subject to no 
contingencies but wet and premature drought, which latter 
only shortens the crop. Even one hundred and forty bushels 
of barley liave been harvested on a single acre. Oats are said 
to degenerate in the seeding, but we have seen the stalk even 
twelve feet high. These crops, again, will sow themselves 
for a second crop the next year, and that will yield more than 
any crop sown in the "Western or Atlantic states. Sixty or 
eighty bushels have been gathered for the volunteer crop of 
barley. This, in fact, is one of the evils to be encountered by 
California agriculture, that every crop perjjetuates itself as a 
weed ; so that no good wheat crop, for example, can be raised 
on a field once sown with barley, till the barley is extermina- 
ted; and one barley-sowing M'ill sometimes yield three or four 
volunteer croj)s that are worth harvesting. Even potatoes 
will perpetuate themselves in the same way. Cliange of crops, 
therefore, is difiicult. AVlien the problem accordingly is 
raised, how or by what process exhausted soils are to be re- 
stored in California, it is not easy now to answer; but some 
process will be doubtless discovered in due time. In many 
cases this exhaustion will come to pass slowly ; for the good 
soil is not unfrequently two, and three, and sometimes eight 



1858.] Cal'ifornia^ its Cliaraderlstics and Pros]?ects. 23 

feet deep. A piece of groiuul sown regularly with wlieat 
for sixteen years, lias been known to yield forty bnsliels and 
more to the acre. A single deep plowing, probably enough, 
would make it good for another sixteen years. 

As regards the enormous growths of California, it should be 
understood that they are not ordinary. The ordinary fruits, 
for example, are not larger than ours, and where the trees arc 
overloaded are commonly small. The extraordinary growths 
appear to be easily accounted for. First, there is a soil too 
deep and rich for any kind of growth to measure it. ISText, 
there is either a natural under-supply of water, or an artificial 
irrigation. ISText, the settings of fruit are limited. And then, 
as no time is lost in cloudings and rain, and the sun drives on 
his work unimpeded, month by mouth, the growth is pushed 
to its utmost limit. So a pear will occasionally be produced 
weighing three and a half pounds, or an a2:)ple-tree, or a 
cherry, will grow a stem ten or twelve feet high in a season. 
The mammoth turnips, onions, beets and cabbages, depend on 
a like concurrence. But these are freaks, or extravagances of 
nature — only they are such as can be equaled nowhere else. 
The Big Trees depend, in part, on these same contingencies^ 
and partly on the remarkable longevity of their species. A 
tree that is watered without rain, having a deep vegetable mold 
in which to stand, and not so much as one hour's umbrella of 
cloud, to fence off the sun, for the whole warm season, and a 
capacity to live withal for two thousand years or more, may as 
well grow three hundred and fifty or four hundred feet high 
and twenty-five feet in diameter, and show the very centre- 
point or pith still sound, at the age of thirteen hundred years, 
as to make any smaller figure with conditions proportionally 
restricted. 

The agricultural capacities of California, it will be seen, are 
very great as regards the rate and facility of production. The 
only drawback now experienced is in the want of a reliable 
and sufficient market. The mines and the cities are now the 
principal consumers. The result is, that if the product is a 
little short, the prices rise extravagantly, because there is no 
other su}>ply. On the other hand, if it is a little over the 



24 California^ its Characteristics and Prosjpects. [Feb. 

demand, tlie prices fall as extravagalltl3^ And then, as the 
producers are flying always towards that "which yields the best 
reward, every kind of product is likely to be overgrown in its 
turn, and so the prices become even more capricious, for the 
reason that they are capricious. When markets are opened by 
an outside commerce, as they will be, and when all the 
whaling ships are fitted and sent out from San Francisco and 
Puget Sound, the mischief will be repaired. At present, 
owing to this caprice of the market, agriculture is scarcely 
less of a venture, than mining. 

Accordingly the attention of land owners is now being 
turned, more than before, to pasturage. The old Spanish 
breed of cattle is giving way to the new cultivated breeds 
most valued here, and large ranges of land are taken np in the 
hill regions, where immense herds of trom one to ten thousand 
head of cattle are collected, which are yielding a rich revenue 
to their owners. These herds are kept sometimes wholly 
without fodder, and generally with very little. They fatten 
most in the summer, when the feed is dry, and only suffer, 
when the falling rains have rotted the old growth, and have 
not yet sufliciently started the new. Hence it is common to 
burn over a considerable portion of the ranges, just before the 
rains, that the cattle may be able to get access to the first 
sprouting of the seeds, at the earliest moment possible. The 
air, accordingly, is filled with smoke for many days ; the 
mountains are flaming round the horizon day and night, as if 
the last day had come, and horsemen are rushing hither and 
thither to fight off" the fires from the wheat fields and the 
pastures of the plains. And then the result is, that the yel- 
low, yellow, ever yellow hills that were, as soon as a good rain 
has sprouted the seeds, come forth — green out of black — and 
the body of the high burnt hill or mountain, is turned to a 
beryl, without so much as a twig, or a weed-stalk, to mar the 
color. This great interest of pasturage promises even to 
exceed the plowing interest in importance. The home market 
for it is equally reliable, and the salted and dried meats, the 
hides, the tallow, and wool, are products that can take the 
world for their market. 



185S.] California, its Characteristics and Prof^pecis. 25 

The culture of the grape, too, promises much. Wlietlier it 
can be successfully prosecuted without irrigation is doubtful, 
thougli it is well known that old, deep rooted vines will bear a 
crop without. It is commonlj believed that California is 
hereafter to become the great wine growing country of the 
Pacific. 

With so many advantages, it is impossible that California 
should not become one of the richest countries in the world, on 
the score of its mere land interest and the products yielded by 
its soil. It has garnered up also, in the soil itself, treasures 
that no other country can boast. It will take a thousand years 
to wash over all the pay dirt of the gold mines. It is compu- 
ted also to have, in a single quartz lead, more gold, five tinies 
over, than is now owned by the whole workl; and other veins 
are being opened, almost every month, which are ready to 
yield great revenues of profit, as soon as tliey are worked. 
The quartz mills, once supposed to be a failure, are now so 
perfected as to yield immense profits, almost without excep- 
tion. The waters too of the mountain are a great wealth, and 
the thirty or forty millions already invested in the ditches, 
ought to be yielding a great revenue, as much of it already 
is. Besides, there are mines of quicksilver, such as make all 
other mines in the world comparatively worthless, deposits of 
borax, rocks of alum, hills of sulphur, quarries of marble, 
beds of coal and of iron — in short, there was never a country 
so underlaid with treasure of every kind. 

The commercial advantages are not yet developed, and will 
not be, till the Pacific shores are lined with new nations, and 
the untold riches of their natural resources are brouo-ht into 
the circulations of trade. Even if a railroad were built across 
the continent, it is not likely that any very great amount of 
merchandise, or any but the most precious forms of merchan- 
dise, would pass that way. Probably there is a greater amount 
of expectation vested in such an improvement, than the actual 
experiment will justify. The distance is too great, the grades 
too heavy, (as heretofore reported,) the running expenses too 
enormous, to allow the freight of any common articles of trade. 



2G California^ its Characteristics and ProsjKcts. [Feb. 

And yet California is on the great water highway of the Pa- 
cific, and her Gate the certain goal of its travel. For it is re- 
markable that this Golden Gate is at the southmost limb of the 
variable trade winds, and that these, blowing in, a little from 
the south of Avest, and out, from a little north of east, will 
drive a ship directly out to China, or directly in from China — 
whichever way they blow — laying a straight course on one of 
the great circles of the earth ; while, immediately south of the 
Gate, the winds begin to change character, and are much less 
available for sailing purposes, and continue to be so, even down 
as far in south latitude as to Valparaiso. Thus to sail a ship 
up the western coast of the continent, from Panama to San 
Francisco, would probably require a whole summer, and even 
that might not suffice for the passage. JSTo ship can ever ap- 
proach that shore by sail without falling into a contest with 
currents, which the light baffling winds and Doldrums make 
it difficult to maintain with success. To get in is difficult, to 
get away more difficult. And hence perhaps it is, at least in 
part, that one may pass down that whole stretch of coast, a 
distance of 3000 miles, in one of the California steamers, 
and actually not see, on the passage, so much as a rag 
of sail of any description. On the other hand, at Puget 
Sound, the only available harbor ground on the north, 
the winds blow off the coast with such violence, that vessels 
after pounding there for weeks together, till the crews were 
quite worn out, have returned to San Francisco to refit for 
a new trial. Besides in the winter trades, which are from 
the northeast, a vessel sailing from China for the Sound will 
have tlie whole distance to make, with a wind directly against 
her ; while she might lay her course for San Francisco and 
straight in, without once shifting her sail. 

Nature, it will thus be seen, has set her seal on San Fran- 
cisco, appointing it to be the great commercial centre of that 
coast and ocean. Here rests the future axis of motion. In- 
deed it is hardly extravagant to imagine that, in some distant 
age, when the enterprise and the resources of that Ocean, with 
its islands and coasts, are fully developed, the Atlantic com- 
merce will be a thing by the way, an affair of the outskirts. 



1S58.] California, its Character Isiics and Prosijeds. 27 

All such expectations, it is obvious, must depend, in a great 
degree, ou the political and moral condition of California. And 
here one very great danger happily is already past ; viz, the in- 
troduction of human slavery. There is no state in the Union 
where slavery could be worked to greater advantage than in Cal- 
ifornia. Connected with this fact, we have also the concomitant 
tact,. that the office-holders and political operators of the state 
have very generally been men from the South, To understand, 
therefore, even after the fact, how it is that slavery is excluded, 
is what any stranger will accomplish with the greatest difficulty, 
No inquiries he can make will quite solve the riddle. Some 
have spoken of the known weight of the laboring and money 
making classes, being always opposed to slavery, and silently 
constraining the politicians, who were not, to respect their posi- 
tion. Some have ascribed much to the personal influence of 
Mr. Fremont. Others have given the credit of the fact mainly 
to Capt, Halleck, sometimes called the father of the constitu- 
tion, a gentleman of great weight and capacity, who is known 
to have been the draughtsman of many of its provisions, but 
has since that time given himself wholly to his profession as 
a lawyer, and withdrawn himself altogether from the game of 
political life. Be it as it may, slavery is forever excluded from 
California, and so from that whole coast ; and that without 
even so mucli as a word of debate ; for this article of the con- 
stitution was simply read and passed by consent, in absolute 
silence. What a fact of history, this, to be the child of 
silence ! 

California unites in its population great elements of divers- 
ity. The 50,000 or 60,000 Chinese simply stay as foreigners. 
The native Californian or Spanish race, comprises gentlemen 
of real respectability, wealth, and character ; but the inferior 
class of herdsmen and retainers that were, are more wild and 
vicious, and really more hopeless, than before the change of 
masters. They live on horseback, without contracting any 
friendship with their horses, which might raise them a little. 
They are cruel to animals of all kinds, cowardly to superiors, 
ignorant, superstitious, frivolous, with little prospect of being 
advanced to anything better hereafter. 



28 California^ its CharaGteristics and Prospects. [Feb. 

A considerable part of the emigration to California, since 
we took possession, is made up of persons from the extreme 
Avest, who crossed over bj the plains — the class who are called 
Border Ruffians with ns, and which there are called, more or 
less derisivelj, Pikes, from Pike county in Missouri. They 
are, by no means, any such desperate, or ruffian class of people, 
as they are just now commonly regarded here. They are, for 
the most j)art, uncultivated and rough, crude in their notions 
of religion, and like all such people, coarse in their prejudices ; 
but they have great honesty and frankness, their impulses are 
strong, and generally magnanimous. They really contain 
the staple qualities, or j^ossibilities of a high character. They 
have true manhood, which is not to be said of every people. 

Another element of the emigration is from the southern, 
or southwestern states, comprising many gentlemen, with their 
families, who are a great accession to the society and manners 
of the cities, and particularly of San Francisco; and, with 
these, a much larger, or at least noisier class of broken down 
politicians, Avho have fled, as it were, to California, to farm the 
voters and offices of a new world, where their stock of capital 
has not yet been exhausted. The former class comprises men 
who appear, like Mr. Stanley, to have emigrated rather to get 
away from political life, and to apply themselves to other pur- 
suits. The latter, trained to public speaking and the manage- 
ment of assemblies, and having this for their trade, have hith- 
erto been able to obtain almost all the offices of the state, and 
have distributed the rewards of office to themselves, in a scale 
of unexampled liberality. Happily there was an end to the 
credit of the state, and that limit has been finally reached. 
The bankrupt people too, are beginning to ask questions they 
had no time to ask before ; competitors also are coming into 
tlie field, whose morality and trustworthiness in other relations 
have been already proved. The dynasty of plunder, there- 
fore, is rapidly coming to an end. 

Another large class of the emigration is from IsTew England, 
New York and the Middle and Northwestern states. And 
these again are in two classes. First the merchants, bankers, 
lawyers, engineers, surveyors, and many of the head miners — 



1858.] Calif or nia^ its Characteristics and Prospects. 29 

men wlio have come to California as to a field of enterprise, 
and who bend all their energies to the })articular personal 
calling that engages them. Secondly, a class of repro])ates in 
all styles and degrees, who find their way to California, jnst be- 
cause they are not wanted aiiywhere. These are the fugitives 
from justice, the absconding bigamists, the felons and prison 
birds who want a new field where they are not known, de- 
falcators, pimps, shoulder strikers and prize fighters, drunkards, 
sous that could not be endured at home, and vagabond gentle- 
men whose friends have been willing to escape the burden of 
their support, by giving them an outfit for some very distant 
region. These and such like characters were tnrned for a 
time, in shoals, upon California. But the pistol, the knife, 
the halter, the bad licpiors, and the Vigilance Connnittecs are 
scattering them rapidly and killing them off. They flourished 
for a time, as the under-fighters and ballot-box operators of 
the politician class just referred to; assuming the alliance 
to be one of natural good fellowship, inasmuch as they too 
use the tools of honor themselves. But their trade is gone, 
they cannot even be drunk in the streets, or draw a knife out 
of their pocket, without a painfully certain prospect of ap- 
pearing in the chain gang the next morning. Meantime, the 
former and better class above named, with many of the better 
class from the South, are building churches, organizing insti- 
tutions, looking after charities, and showing more and more 
distinctly that the great hope of California is in them. They 
will even consent to serve on juries, and some of them also to 
be named for public offices of trust and power, which formerly 
they would not. Time is giving them the controlling posi- 
tion, as by a kind of necessary process, and even compelling 
them to assume it. 

The composition, or the combined elements of the emigra- 
tion, it will be seen, are not favorable to the immediate coales- 
cence of the new state, in terms of order and public virtue. 
Besides a good many hostile influences of a more special char- 
acter, it will be easy to perceive, concur in detaining or hold- 
ing back the new community, from the kind of civil adminis- 
tration necessary to its good name and social comfort. 



30 California^ its Characteristics and Prospects. [Feb. 

Thus, in the mining towns, are gathered large bodies of 
men, witliont wives or cliiklren, living as cenobites in their 
dens, and no one needs to be informed that men, living sepa- 
rately from women, are sure to make a large stride towards 
barbarism. The occupation of mining is also more adventur- 
ous in itself, than consists with the best habits of application ; 
for if the digging is a venture, why should there not be a 
venture at the gambling table, without the digging ? It is 
not unfrequent that the placer mining gives out, and it is 
known to be always more or less precarious. Hence many of 
the towns are mere encampments, and are called " camps." 
And some that assumed to be more are already given up and 
nearly forsaken. Hence the miners become more or less migra- 
tory themselves, and their towns are too nearly so, many of 
them, to be much cared for, either in the building, or in the 
establishment of social and religious institutions. A stranger, 
too, will see a very distinct and significant character in the 
names given to places ; such as Yankee Jim, Fiddletown, 
Jackass' Gulch, Whisky Bar, and a whole hundred names, of 
which, these are the choicer specimens. It appears to be the 
general opinion, that there is a decided moral and social im- 
provement in the mining population. But one who has at- 
tended church for two Sundays, in a mining town of the very 
first order, finding about forty persons present to hear a good 
Christian sermon, and passing in the street when returning 
from church, in both cases, full five hundred men, who had 
rushed together as spectators of a street fight, will hardly 
think it possible that there should have been a very great 
moral improvement there. 

Agriculture, too, has been connected, in California, with 
unwonted and even wholly peculiar causes of moral deterio- 
ration. The titles to land have many of them been so uncer- 
tain, or so far unsettled, by frauds and charges of fraud, that 
there has been a natural reluctance in emigrants to incur the 
risk of a loss, in purchasing the soil. Hence, also, in part, 
the very peculiar kind of squatting that has come into vogue 
in California, and probably a full half of tlie agriculture of 
the state is either now, or at some former time, has been 



1858.] Oaltforma, its Characteridlcs and Prosjjects. 31 

carried on, as an operation of squattin<;' in tliis manner, viz, 
by taking possession of lands generally known to ho vested 
in private owners by a title derived from the Mexican govern- 
ment, and not in the United States as in other new territories, 
where the laws of Congress authorize the occupation and 
make it a perfectly legitimate act. An American purchaser, 
for example, buys one of the old Mission properties, coni- 
prising a tract, seven or eight miles square, of the very best 
land in California, and everybody knows the title to be per- 
fect, because the land has been held and occupied by the 
Mission, for more than fifty years. He expends over §100,000 
in fencing it, and the property rises in value so rapidly, that 
he begins to be rated and to rate himself as being worth, at 
least, a million of dollars. But behold, a cloud of squatters 
suddenly appears pouring in upon his lands, squatting inside 
of his fences and among his wheat, erecting theii" tents or 
huts, and leaving liini to pay the taxes, while they reap the 
harvests. He is now the bankrupt purchaser and they are 
the occupants, till at least six or eight years of litigation, 
terminated at Washington, have established the title in his 
creditors, which everybody knew "svas in himself. Meantime 
they have gotten the use or rent for so many years, which is 
to them a handsome outfit. The old native Californians are 
treated in the same way. Ko chapter of wrong and oppress- 
ion, in which our countrymen have had their part, is more 
sad or revolting. Even between the old ranchero's house and 
well, the squatter has taken his post and set up his hut. 
Then, assuming also that the cattle are wild, as that the 
lands are public, the squatter wanting a steak has taken his 
rifle and killed an ox. And so the poor herdsman has been 
stripped both of lands and herds, by these remorseless Sabeaus, 
and that with airs of indignity and low-bred consequence, 
more difficult to bear than the robberies themselves. The 
truculent savage spirit generated by these land-piracies, will 
be readily understood. The tragedy of young Suilole is 
happily an extreme instance. He was a gentleman, educa- 
ted, as we have heard, in Paris, equal, if not supci'ior, in per- 
sonal accomplishments, to most of the educated Americans. 



32 California^ its Characteristics and Prosjpects. [Feb. 

But he ventured to remonstrate very gently with a squatter 
for cutting down the trees of his father's exquisite little val- 
ley in the mountains, and selling them for wood, giving him 
liberty at the same time, to cut what he wanted for himself; 
but the next time he passed by, on his way over to the 
ranch, in company with a friend, the savage came out with 
his rifle, got him in range as he threw himself over on the 
side of his horse, and drew him dead to the ground. Sheltered 
and secreted by others like himself, he could never be found. 
As the titles are now being settled ]»y tlie decisions of the 
courts, the squatters are very gradually yielding to rlie law 
and becoming purchasers. All these wrongs will finally be a 
thing of the past. 

By the very latest advices, it appears that tlie squatter 
combination is just begiiming to yield some respect to the 
decisions of law. Heretofore the owners, in establishing their 
title, have commonly not gotten possession, but only a right to 
pay the taxes. Indeed, this third estate of squatterdom had 
sufficient power in the legislature, two years ago, to get a law 
enacted, requiring owners, when dislodging or ejecting them, 
to pay for the improvements, according to the apprisal of a 
committee from the precinct ; a plan by which they expected 
to get back the value of the laud ; for the apj^risers would 
be squatters almost of course. Ilaj^pily the courts would 
not execute the law. And but a year since, the venerable 
patriarch of the l^apa valley, who came over from Missouri 
as a trapper, more than forty years ago, having finally 
established his old homestead title, comprising eight or ten 
thousand acres of the best land in the state, was evidently 
beginning also to find a much harder question on his hands ; 
viz, how to move the squatters without periling his life. 
And yet, among these land-pirates, called squatters, are a 
great many persons from the East, and even from Massa- 
chusetts and Connecticut ; and, what is more, from our Chris- 
tian churches ; and some of them appear even now to be 
seriously minded and conscientious in their life. Because 
the same word, squatter, is used to designate this known act 
of robbery, (for it is often such and nothing else,) they really 



1858.] CaliJ^ornia, its Characteristics and Pronpeds. 33 

suppose that tlicy arc doiiiii; the same hiwful and right thing, 
which is practiced under the acts of Congress, at the West. 

As the mining and the agriculture of California appear, thus 
far, to have been connected with unpropitious moral influ- 
ences, so also it has been, even to a much greater degree, 
with the trade of politics. Composed of elements so various 
and repellant, it was not to be expected, for a time, that there 
would be much confidence in public men or proceedings. 
And the moral character of the political operators and office 
holders was generally not of a kind to inspire confidence. 
They were gamblers, debauchees, drunkards, men who lined 
their bosoms, not with virtue, but with knives and pistols. 
They were just such men, in short, as could never be in confi- 
dence, even if they violated no trust. The bullies they had in 
their employ, as inspectors of the ballot, could not swear to a 
true count and be believed. Juries were distrusted, because 
the panel was so easily made up, to include one whom the 
criminal, on trial, might " hang," to stand out for him in the 
verdict. The judges were such characters that they plainly 
ought to be bribed, if they were not. Administrators and 
trustees were suspected, as being appointed by the connivance 
of judges. Legislators and governors Avere distrusted also. 
This distrust became, in due time, a torment to the public 
peace, by its uncertainty ; and none the less a torment that 
the worst rumors and suspicions Avere most likely to be true ; 
till finally, everything bad began to be true ; and the public 
prints to make a point of heroism, in dealing out their accusa- 
tions with unsparing boldness. A stranger could hardly guess 
what it meant. Every print Avas for California. Nothing 
too laudatory could be said for it ; meantime, as if a paradisaic 
whole could be made up of diabolical particulars, the sweep- 
ing denunciations of individuals appeared to liave no honest 
man in it. And Avhat AVas most remarkable in all these accu- 
sations, Avas that every charge made against judges and others 
of bribery, or of fraud, Avas given circumstantially ; names, 
dates, amounts, agents, all stated Avith exactness. Probably a 
very considerable share of these charges of bribery, and per- 
jury, and fraud, Avere true. But the misery Avas, that no one 

L.cfG. 



34 California, its Characteristics and Prosj^ects. [Feb. 

could guess wliicli. Society ^Yas dissolved and law reduced to 
an instrument of suspicion. It was a state most bitter and 
even horrible. Whether their facts were only suspicions and 
rumors converted into facts by repetition, or real and veri- 
table truths of history ; whether it was the licentiousness of the 
press or its uncommon fidelity ; or whether, possibly, it was 
not all the fatality which attends every community where 
confidence is gone, no one could know, or satisfactorily judge. 
Be it as it may, out of this general distrust and demoraliza- 
tion, came the Vigilance Committee. It Avas raised by the 
torture that exasperates society when confidence is gone. So 
far not to sympathize with it is impossible, and the more that 
almost all the better citizens were in it. Even Christian pro- 
fessors left the church and the communion, to be in the out- 
break, and bear arms in that vast congregation, gathered as a 
thunder-cloud round the jail, on the distant hill side. 

It is not our design to discuss the committee. Suflice it to 
say, that their intent was good, their proceedings honest and 
carefully deliberate, and their military conduct admirably de- 
cisive and efiicient. Their great fault was that they did not 
see their point exactly, and ofiPered reasons for their action, 
a great deal worse than their action. If they had undertaken, 
not to administer the laws, or take them back into their own 
hands, Init to restore the laws, by plucking down the usurpers, 
who stood in no right of law, being elected only by the perjury 
of the inspectors, their question would have been greatly simpli- 
fied. Then, because of the almost impossibility of convicting 
the perjured inspectors, by any ordinary proceedings of law, 
they would only have done it by extraordinary ; and it would 
have been all the better if, to make a due impression of this 
crime, as the greatest of all crimes, they had sacked the whole 
tribe, be they many or few, and sunk them in the bottom 
of the Bay. Doing this, instead of resuming functions, the 
right of which strikes at the root of all constitutional govern- 
ment, they need only have insisted on some extraordinary 
means of restoring functions already taken away. The whole 
experiment was critical, more critical than our eastern com- 
munities know ; for there was a time, a terrible tAvelve hours, 



1S5S.] California, its Characteristics and Prospects. 35 

just after tlie release of Judge Terry, when the question of a 
new Executive Coniinittee, who slioukl be more ethcient and 
bokler, i. c., more hhiody, was pending and apparently just 
ready to be carried by the wdiirlwind of passion outside ; 
wdiich new committee, if it had not been dexterously avoided, 
would have been like the new committee of Paris, and similar 
scenes would probably have followed. The escape was nar- 
row, so narrow that if the leading gentlemen concerned had 
now the question of a new vigilance committee movement on 
hand, they would probably hesitate long. And yet it must be 
granted for the honor of this same questionable, perilous adven- 
ture of reform, that San Francisco is probably noAV the best 
governed city in the nnion. The laws are now enforced, 
the economies are duly attended to, there is no phmder, 
and every evil doer stamls in fear. It is the beginning, ap- 
parently, of a great moral reaction, which is felt by the 
whole state. Whatever may be true, therefore, of this great 
popular movement, whether it is right or wrong, wise or nn- 
wise, it will be impossible ever to turn it as a reproach on the 
certainly patriotic men who were foremost in it. They are 
much more likely to be celebrated hereaftei', with Hai'inodius 
and Aristogiton and other great leaders of mutiny, that have 
been deliverers of their country. 

We state these facts concerning the moral aspects of mining; 
the occuj^ation, by force, of lands known to be held by a legal 
right; and the usurpations and perjuries and briberies of polit- 
ical intriguers and demagogues, connected with the general 
destruction of confidence and the necessary throes of violence 
by which they must inevitably be redressed, not as being, in 
themselves, any picture of California. We know that they 
are not. They are only facts, without which any description is 
rose colored and without sound verity, — such facts as will 
meet a stranger first, because they are most outstanding and 
impressive. And for this the reader will make due allowance, 
even as in reading any history ; for it is not the virtues and 
the smooth and silent flowings of goodness that make up ever 
the staple of a history, but the explosive wrongs and outrages 
rather, Ijy which the evenness of good was disturbed. For our- 



36 California^ its Characteristics and Prospects. [Feb. 

selves we regard these facts, not with any feeling of despair or 
discouragement. On the contrary, we perceive a certain sub- 
limity, in the contest here begun and the clearing process going 
forward, which creates appetite in us. We know the cer- 
tain victory, we see it coming, and we envy especially those 
young heroic spirits who have set themselves, in the love of 
God and their newly adopted state, to such works of duty and 
sacrifice, as are necessary to the sublime future they have in 
prospect. 

Opposite to these facts that we have stated are others, which 
awaken our respect and inspire our confidence. They have a 
good and able ministry, for example, such a ministry as will 
compare favorably, in all the denominations, with any of the 
older states. They have churches in every denomination, not 
inferior to churches here. The attendance is good, especially 
in the cities, and the order, the dress, the music are only too 
much evened by the manner of the East. 

The Sabbath also is becoming a more established institution, 
and to be without a Sabbath, as a day of rest, is more and 
more distinctly felt to be an oppression. And therefore the 
traders and shopkeepers, in most of the country villages, are 
petitioning the Legislature, more earnestly every year, for the 
establishment of a complete suspension of trade. 

Education is not forgotten. The towns and cities are allow- 
ed by statute to tax themselves for this purpose, and many of 
them do it most liberally. The public schools of San Francisco 
are not inferior to those of our Eastern cities — many think 
them even superior. 

There is no reason to apprehend any loss of natural vigor 
and tone from the climate on that shore. Some have taken it 
as a bad indication that the Digger Indians, (the aboriginals 
of California,) are the most spiritless and abject of all known 
tribes on the continent, and about the lowest specimens of hu- 
manity known upon the earth. But this may be sufficiently 
accounted for, by the general softness of the climate and the 
fact that they have never been required to feed themselves by 
the manly exploits of hunter-life ; having always at hand 
enough of bugs, and fish, and sugar pine bark to serve their 
purpose. Sometimes also a degree of discouragement has 



1858.] California^ its Characteristics and Prospects. 37 

been derived from tlie analogical or symbolical fact, that 
there is not a stick of smart, hard timber in all California ; 
nothing out of which an axe handle, or a spoke, or a fclley 
could be made ; every hardest, soundest tree, even the oak, 
being always brittle to such a degree (" hrash " they say in 
California, and in New England " spalt ") that the trunk 
will commonly break asunder five or six times when it is fell- 
ed, and lie as a pile of fragments on the ground, even though 
it is three feet in diameter. Is this a natural token, some 
have asked, with a little feeling of superstition, that the future 
men of California are to be only a brittle or brash stock and 
without any real timber of endurance in them % Why any 
more a token than the giant pines, and redwoods, and cedars 
are a token of prodigiously tall men, a race at least twelve or 
fifteen feet high % Why any more than the often naked hills 
and plains are a token of no men at all ? What other sign do 
we in fact require that the future stock of California will be 
a stock of high capacity, than that the climate is healthy, the 
growths bountiful, and that we are capable ourselves of the 
greatest endurance there, both bodily and mental, and have, 
in fact, a sense of robustness that we have nowhere else ? 

At the same time, it requires no gift of prophecy to perceive, 
in the physical resources and commercial advantages of that 
country, that an immense wealth is, in due time, to be devel- 
oped there, such wealth as will give vigor to all institutions 
and works that require expense, and put everything on a scale 
of breadth and magnificence. If there is any country in the 
world where the future men are not to be cramped and whit- 
tled by close restrictions, it is California. At present the Cal 
ifornians say that tliey are poor ; they feel poor, because they 
are now at the dead point of retrocession, where their extrav- 
agant expectations are being shortened in for that second be- 
ginning, which every new state and city has to make. And 
yet there is nothing more wonderful, with all tliis depression, 
than the amount of wealth already created on that shore. 
How many thousand years of day labor has it taken simply 
to build so many houses, fences, shoj^s, steamers, ditches, 
towns and cities. Three of these cities, San Francisco, Sacra- 



38 California^ its Characteristics and Prospects, [Feb. 

mento and Marysville, have so mucli of city life and charac- 
ter, that we hardly recognize their newness. And yet only 
nine years have passed, since all this immense wealth began 
to be created ! — and that, 5,000 miles away, on the shore, as it 
were, of another continent. 

There is good and cultivated society in California, such as 
there never has been in any other new state in the Union. The 
number of liberally educated men is greater by far, than was ever 
found in any other state of twice the same political age. Car- 
pets, good beds, clean tables, bright knives and forks, courtesy, 
hospitality, public entertainments and jjleasures on a footing of 
civilization — all these indications of comfort and society are 
widely diffused. One sign or token of this kind we cannot for- 
bear to mention, because it signifies much. Passing hither and 
thither on the little steamers, up to Marysville, to Stockton, 
to the towns north of the bay, where often the number of pas- 
sengers did not exceed thirty, we have seen, again and again, 
a table most neatly set, the silver bright and clean, the meats 
well prepared and good, without any nonsense of show dishes, the 
servants tidy, quiet, and respectful — in short, the whole figure 
of the entertainment more rational and better than we have 
ever seen, either on the boats of the Mississippi or of the At- 
lantic coast. Such facts indicate society, more than any most 
splendid entertainment gotten up by private opulence can. 

One other consideration must be named, if California is 
to be well understood ; viz, that with all the violence and the 
savage wrongs and dark vices that have heretofore abounded 
there, they seldom do a mean thing. They can perpetrate 
real atrocities, but they must be generous. A considerable 
part of their blameable profusion comes of their extreme 
jealousy of littleness, or meanness. Men really poor will 
often share their last dollar in helping a sick friend, or 
even a sick stranger. If a poor minister, whom they have 
only seen at their funerals, is known to be on short allowance, 
they will have a ticketed supper, not unlikely, to help him ; 
which, if it is not the best way of establishing religion, does 
at least show their generosity. If a preacher asks the privilege 
of addressing them in a gambling saloon, on Sunday, they 



1858.] California^ its CharacteHstios and Prospects. 39 

are veiy likely to accede, to hear liiui respectfully, pass round a 
hat and make up a liberal purse for him, then put down 
their stakes and resume the phiy! Tiie recent vote of the 
people to assume and pay the state debt was an act of pure 
magnanimity. Here was a debt of $5,000,000 which was 
expressly forbidden by the constitution of the state. This 
provision of the constitution was known, discussed, openly 
understood, and the loan was obtained directly in the face 
of it. The money too had gone for nothing but to feed the 
political vampires, for whose plunder it was raised, and the 
state has not a vestige of property to sliow for it, but some 
old benches, that belonged to the state house at Vallejo. 
If then a peo^Dle have any right, by constitution, to guard 
themselves against being plundered by their rulers, the 
people of California had a right to stand upon the restriction 
so prudently established in their constitution, and were 
under no obligations, whether of right or of honor, to pay 
this debt — to refuse was no act of repudiation. But their in- 
stincts were too generous, they had too much pride of feeling 
to insist on their right. Where Mississippi raised a quibble to 
get off from her honest debt, California took a gratuitous obli- 
gation to get it on, and to fasten it. 

There remains a single topic to which, in the conclusion of 
our article, already too far extended, we must briefly refer ; 
viz, to the effort now on foot to establish a College or Univer- 
sity in California. The heaviest detraction, after all, from the 
future prospects of California, is in the fact that so many go 
thither only as adventurers, not meaning to stay, and that so 
manv, often the most prosperous, are continually returning. 
And they do it, in great part, because they cannot educate 
their tarailies there, as their means allow them to desire. In 
the first place, many never take out their families for this 
reason, and, in the next place, when they have done it, and 
their sons are grown up to the age at which they begin 
to want the best advantages, they return with them, and are 
so lost to the state as a family ; for the distance and the moral 
perils of a separation from parents are so great, that there is 
no alternative, but a re-emigration. This begets an unsettled 



40 California^ its Characteristics and rrosjpects. [Feb. 

feeling in those who remain, which makes them careless often 
of the good of the state, and, besides, it carries off a large 
percentage of the wealth created ; for the families that return 
are commonly such as have been most successful, and all 
which they have gained is carried with them. And the 
probability is, that if the contemplated railroad were built 
across the Continent, (which it will not be for a long time to 
come,) it would scarcely help them at all, but might rather 
hasten them in this losing process. 

What they want therefore at this time, above all things else, 
is a good College or University. Such an institution would 
do more to consolidate and settle their state, and to settle the 
confidence of their future, than even the railroad itself. 
There are no five states together in our western world, which, 
if they had none at all, w^ould want an institution of this kind 
so much as California. For the supply of this want, some of 
their best and ablest men are preparing. They have had a 
charter for three years, organizing the "College of California." 
Their Board of Trustees contains a representation of all the 
Christian denominations, who are united in cordiality and 
good understanding. They are said to have lately fixed on 
their site — on the eastern side of the Bay, opposite San Fran- 
cisco. They have had a preparatory school for three years 
past, under the tuition of Rev. Henry Durant, an accom- 
plished scholar and a Christian, and the design is to oi'ganize 
a Freshman Class the coming autunm. 

What then is wanted now is the endowment, and for this 
everything is ready. To obtain this endowment in California, 
except in part, will now be impossible. Much of the wealth 
is not in the right hands, and where it is not, where there is 
every disposition to aid, the possibility is very much reduced 
by the heavy loads of debt, which many who ought to be 
rich, are required just now to carry. When money will bring 
three per cent, a month, year by year, on perfect security, the 
lending party is not likely to put much of it in a College, and 
the borrowing party still less. Are there no great rich men 
in the East, no millionaires or less in computation, who will 
be induced to look at such an opportunity? Had we the 



1858.] California^ its Characteristics and Prospects. 41 

fortune of but half a million, in our editorial hands, we are 
quite sure of this, that whoever might want to assume the en- 
dowment of such an institution, would have to be very quick 
in his action, or he would lose the chance. What an op[)ortu- 
nity for the man of fortune, who has no object in life, no fam- 
ily to provide for, or none but such as are already rich enough, 
and who would be greatly more ennobled by his name and 
example, as the founder of such an institution, than by all his 
property without the name. How many such too are there 
who are really meaning, when they die, to accomplish some 
great work with their money! Why not do it when they are 
living, and have the satisfaction of a consciousness enriched 
and a heart enlarged by their beneficence? To have one's 
name on such an institution as this, connected with the great 
historj'- and with all the learning, and all the most forward in- 
fluences of this new world on the Pacific, is a thought which 
might quicken the blood even of a man most sluggish and 
dull. For it is to win a greater honor, by many times, than 
to be President of our great Republic. That is an honor, 
which, as the line grows longer, loses more and more its sig- 
nificance, till finally, it will signify as little to have been 
one of the Presidents as to have been one of the Doges of 
Yenice. But the other, like the names of Harvard and Yale, 
will brighten and gather to itself a greater weight and power, 
as long as the tongue itself may exist. And the satisfaction 
one may have in this honoris sublimely justified in the fact, 
that he is not merely to be known, or mentioned in the future 
ages of the world — that might be a very common ambition, 
for who is there who does even naturally desire as much? — but 
is permitted to know that his name is to be a power, and 
to work for all the coming ages, growing brighter and doing 
more good even than he himself while living. That is a legiti- 
mate and glorious ambition — the highest that a mortal can 
cherish. The Trustees, in the Appeal they published a year 
ago, placed the subject thus : 

" Could some rich citizen, who can do it without injury to 
himself, step forward at this time of our beginning, and set his 
name_ upon the institution itself, by the side of a Harvard or 



42 Ccdifornia, its Characteristics and Profjpects. [Feb. 

a Yale, by subscribing a large part of the proposed endow- 
ment ; giving ns an opportunity, assisted by his beginning and 
example, to carry up the subscription even to the highest point 
we have named, he would be enriched by the sense of his mu- 
nificence, as no man ever was or can be by the count of his 
money. We have no delicacy in respect to the customary 
honors conferred by universities, when they set the names of 
their benefactors on the halls, libraries and professorships 
endowed by their munificence ; or when they drop the dry, 
impersonal name of their charter for one that represents the 
public spirit, and the living heart of a living man who could 
be more than rich, the patron of learning, the benefactor and 
father of the coming ages. These are monuments that may 
well provoke a degree of ambition ; not even an Egyptian 
pyramid raised over a man's ashes could so far ennoble him, as 
to have the learning and science of long ages and eternal 
realms of history superscribed by his name. And yet this 
better kind of monument is itself a jDower so beneficent, that 
he ought, even as duty, to desire it, and for no false modesty 
decline it. Such monuments are not like those of stone or 
brass, which simply stand doing nothing ; they are monuments 
eternally fruitful, showing to men's eyes and ears what belongs 
to wealth, and wliat the founders of the times gone by have 
set as examples of beneficence." 



Erratum. — Page 145, line 19. Instead of "whence Call — -fornia," read — 
"whence Cali^fornia (Caleo and /ornan.)" 



THE NE^y ENGLANDER 

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tional churches in the city. It receives also constant assistance 
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